The Other Side of the Museum

The Other Side of the Museum

What a strange room, filled with empty painting-frames hung one after another along four walls (Sully, room 906). It gives the eye a rest. And it reminds us that the paintings on the walls of the Louvre haven’t always been presented in the same way. This rich neogothic frame, heavy, gilded, ornate, was commissioned by Vivant Denon, the museum’s first director under Napoleon, to hold Carlo Braccesco’s Annunciation Triptych, painted in the late fifteenth-century. But tastes have changed since the days of Vivant Denon. Today, the three panels are exhibited more discreetly in the Grande Galerie, side by side, each in a narrower, less invasive, less imposing frame. This also allows viewers to see them separately, without letting the eye fall captive to the framing (Denon, room 710). But that isn’t to say the current way of doing things is more authentic.